India, Jan. 12 -- Sriman Narayana, a farmer from Pothureddypalli village in Krishna district, decided to take up palm oil farming on his 2.6 ha farm after government officials painted a rosy picture of growing oil palm.
Four years later, the small farmer ended up uprooting close to 400 oil palm trees he had planted. "The plants would have started yielding in another two years. But I was not able to bear the expenses involved in their maintenance," he says.
Narayana is not alone. The largest oil yielding crop in the world, the Indian government has been encouraging farmers to take up palm oil production across different states, but many small palm oil farmers, who constitute 70 percent of the country's farming community, are regretting the...